The Tree of Re-Naming

Morbat, who was not Morbat, stood before the Tree of Re-Naming. The sigil shimmered in the space between Anthuor’s antlers, and increased in size and importance until nothing else was perceptible in Morbat’s sensorium. The emblems hung like ornaments from the branches of the Tree. Morbat knew not the language nor meaning of the symbols so expressed, and simply chose three which seemed to him both true and beautiful by the stirrings of his heart.

He chose:

RockStarfishAnnihilation

Anthuor laughed and the walls of the Cave of Unnaming shook heartily in reply.

“You have chosen well. Rock, for the weight under which you will be ground to dust. Starfish, for the poison your flesh will always bear. Annihilation, for flouting your oath in my name, and running your flag against the wind.”

“Rise, Annihilation, and your poison flesh be ground to dust!”

At that, the skeletal form whose name was Annihilation rose up to its full height, and there was a great creaking heard deep within the earth. Rock against rock, crushing, inexorable power. And in his bones, the magician Annihilation felt that same force, crushing him from all sides invisibly.

The structural integrity of his bones turned in slow, short impossible moments to nothing. They fractures, shattered into shards, and shattered again. Over and over until the little sharp bits were ground literally to dust. And his tattered cloak reduced to a few stray fibers.

In this moment, in the darkness, one who dwelt there, freely by right, stirred in reaction in her nest. Arising out of a great hibernation, she crept to the place of the noise, and found only a pile of dust, and a few stray fibers.

She yawned. Eager to return to sleep, she gathered up the fibers in her mouth, thinking they looked soft to sleep on, and returned to her nook, where she added them to her bedding and fell back to sleep.